With The iPad Pro, Is Apple Preparing To Flout One Of Steve Jobs’ Biggest Tablet Commands?

Ever since the death of Apple’s visionary co-founder Steve Jobs, observers have wondered if the company would be able to survive and thrive in Jobs’ absence. Apple, fortunately, has been able to flourish even with Jobs being gone, due largely to the fact that Jobs’ fingerprints were already all over the company.

This year, though, might see Apple making a sizable departure from Jobs’ edicts, and it might start with the rumored iPad Pro.

Steve Jobs was never really one to mince words, and he had some very strong ideas on what’s right and wrong in terms of touchscreen computing. One of the things Jobs had a strong opinion on was the necessity of a stylus. Jobs was certain that, with the iPhone and iOS, Apple had developed a one-two punch that would do away with the need for styli entirely.

“If you see a stylus, they blew it,” Jobs once famously said, and that apparently has been Apple’s guiding light since the original iPhone. All of the interactions one does on an iOS device, Apple’s thinking goes, should be able to be accomplished just using a finger or two. There have been stylus products introduced for Apple’s iPad and iPhone, but none of them have been as capable as they would be if Apple had made them in house.

Now, though, comes word that Apple could well be preparing to take a big step out of Steve Jobs’ prescribed path for touchscreen computing. Apple might be ready to come out with its own stylus for the rumored iPad Pro.

Apple may be working on its own stylus for the iPad Pro, arguably flouting Steve Jobs' desires for the future of touchscreen computing.

The news comes by way ofMacRumors, which points to a report from well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo says that Apple has been sitting on a smart stylus for a while, and that we might see it debut alongside a 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

According to Kuo, the smart stylus would be “more precise than a person’s fingers,” making it “more convenient to use than the combination of keyboard and mouse in some cases.” Kuo thinks that Apple will offer the stylus as an optional add-on for the iPad Pro, one aimed at giving creatives and professional types more control over their input options.

Given that the iPad Pro is still a rumor, there’s no way of knowing if Apple will introduce the smart stylus as a new input method in the near future or not. Apple does hold a patent for just such a device, though, and the iPad Pro has been rumored for quite some time, so this may well be a thing that’s going to happen.